that is in our power. Neither wealth is in our power, nor health, nor reputation, nor in a word any thing else except the right use of appearances. This (right use) is by nature free from restraint, this alone is free from impediment. Why then do you not finish the work? Tell me the reason. For it is either through my fault that you do not finish it, or through your own fault, or through the nature of the thing. The thing itself is possible, and the only thing in our power. It remains then that the fault is either in me or in you, or, what is nearer the truth, in both. Well then, are you willing that we begin at last to bring such a purpose into this school, and to take no notice of the past? Let us only make a beginning. Trust to me, and you will see.
CHAPTER XX.
against the epicureans and academics.
The propositions which are true and evident are of necessity used even by those who contradict them: and a man might perhaps consider it to be the greatest proof of a thing being evident that it is found to be necessary even for him who denies it to make use of it at the same time. For instance, if a man should deny that there is anything universally true, it is plain that he must make the contradictory negation, that nothing is universally true. What, wretch, do you not admit even this? For what else is this than to affirm that whatever is universally affirmed is false? Again if a man should come forward and say: Know that there is nothing that can be known,[1] but all things are incapable of sure evidence; or if another say, Believe me and you will be the better for it, that a man
- ↑ 'Itaque Arcesilas negabat esse quidquam quod sciri posset, ne illud quidem ipsum, quod Socrates sibi reliquisset. Sic omnin latere censebat in occulto, neque esse quidquam quod cerni aut intelligi possit. Quibus de causis nihil oportere neque profiteri neque adfirmare quemquam neque adsensione adprobare.' Cicero, Academ. Post. 1. 12, Diog. Laert. ix. 90 of the Pyrrhonists.
